Those That Suffer
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: Deathfic. A Diclonius female escapes her personal hell only to find her end at the hands of a bigger monster. NOW IN PROGRESS.
1. Chapter 1

He stood right there, a short distance away, in a moonlit wooden corridor littered with blood and bodies hung from the walls and all around him in macabre configurations of suffering and torment. He looked around as naturally as if he was born in a room full of death, as if it was natural as walking through a field of grain. The red Victorian trenchcoat hung on his form like the dried underside of a skinned man, hiding his long arms beneath it and the hand lifting with poetic slowness. The muzzle was birthed out of the shadows under that nightmare coat, glittering in the swirling emergency light that alternated red-yellow-red-yellow from outside, making every glittery surface of it appear as though it were imbued with flame.

But so far, he did not see me. If he did, he barely turned his head to fixate those glowing orange glasses on my location.

Every instinct in me screamed to flee. For the first time, I was afraid.

---

It started on the usual morning. I was strapped with tungsten chains to the wall. My legs and arms unbelievably heavy. Naked and alone for most of the day except when they brought in that tray, stopped exactly five meters and a half meters away and brought me a wooden bowl and spoon and fed me the usual protein-rich gruel that made my insides feel like they were processing bits of glass rather than nutritious goupy brown meal. I slept with my head hung down, unable to discern the pink of my hair from the blood staining it a much darker color.

Experiment after experiment. How much can the Diclonius bitch take? How else can we break her, tear her apart, make her tell us her secrets?

They knew nothing. But I knew even less. All I knew was that someday I would have to be free. I would get away.

When I was little, days after I had come forward from my cocoon and accepted my vectors as a part of my being, I had kept a picture of my home. Another island, far from here. It was wet and cold, and even in summer, there was never a day of sunshine without a few days of rain. The picture was of an enormous clocktower, and I remember the sound it made when it struck the time. It carried across the river there, the rooftops I traveled at night, and all the world was mine and the clocktower was my friend because it always told me where I was if I just listened for its call. The sun rarely shown for more than five minutes at a time, it seemed.

I liked the darkness there in that place I used to live. I liked the cold, because it gave me an excuse to hide the delicate ear-shaped osseous tissue protruding from the sides of my temporal lobe under a hat. The rain gave me an excuse to play in the puddles and laugh gleefully before I scurried like a cat through alleyways and heard the snatched conversations of human beings not worthy enough to breathe the sacred air of the earth.

I didn't understand why everyone I came into contact with treated me so strangely. I didn't understand why I hated everyone, even those who genuinely wanted to help me.

But after my capture, I understood why. I understood when they tore my clothes and shot me, strapped me down and filled my body with unspeakable pain, shot at me without any avenue of escape, tested my vectors with stronger and stronger ammunition, and cut into my body without any reservations about whether the scars would last or be too terrible.

I understood very clearly. All mankind is a disease and the symptom is suffering.

----

I strained to listen for their conversations when they thought I wasn't looking up at the vast, double-layered window that protected them inside their observation bay. The glass was too thick to transmit any sound, and the head scientist of this wing's back was turned. I could read lips like any expert now, but I only could read one side of the conversation that fateful day. I was waiting to see if at last all my suffering would be paid off and I would again know the taste of rain and the bitterness of the wind against my face to counterpoint the fire burning inside me.

I had practiced and practiced it for ages. It was deadly and many times I thought I might just accidently kill myself, but with time, I became confident - directing my vectors into my own body. I explored avenues of my body I never knew existed before. I spent hours dissecting my understanding of pain and trying to cauterize it. Then it was a simple matter of switching it off and on. After that, I knew how to make my body limp without feeling any pain at all. When they fired at me to measure the limits of my vectors, I no longer felt the pain but only the pressure with a distant horrible detachment, gazing at the gore spattering the walls around me without any realization of the damage.

After several more weeks, I understood how I would beat them - how every single one of them would suffer. All I had to do was die.

I forced myself to wake up early in the morning. After a painful encounter with several lead balls fired at me at the highest velocity settings, the morning after I slowed my heart. Slower, slower... in gentle increments, I kept my breathing shallow but also slow. My breasts rose and fell with barely any detection at all. Their life detection systems might register me as 'flatline' if I slowed my heart just enough - or at least cause alarm.

If I was disposable, I would be lucky if they got near enough for me to use my vectors against them as they unchained me from the wall. However, that was not my plan. I was a precious test subject, and I understood that I was only one of a few in this entire laboratory.

So, as I hung limply, blood dripping from my slowly healing injuries, my heart was beating a sixteenth of its normal rate and my chest barely fluttered with breath. It was difficult to think, but I heard the hydraulic hiss of the four-foot thick automatic doors sliding open and several footsteps approach.

"Quickly! Get her down. Is she conscious at all?"

"Minimal brain action, as if she's been knocked out."

"Can she be saved?"

"Chances are, she's in a coma. If that's the case, the new option now is to put her in confinement on a life support system."

Closer, I willed them. Closer, you monsters.

They unchained me. Their filthy hands were touching me, but I was as limp as a rag doll as they rolled my nude, bruised, scarred, bleeding body onto a hospital bed and rolled me toward the middle of the room and then to the quadruple-locked automatic doors. They hissed open. My vectors whispered to me, urging me to lash out, to tear their brains from the backs of their heads and smear them into paste on the walls.

Then, in the corridor, I saw my chance. They did not restrain me at all. As they rolled me into the elevator, I released my vectors.

A nurse beside me lost her head, her face frozen in concern that changed to alarm as she suddenly saw the rest of her body from a worm's eye view. The rest of them were shredded apart like confetti before the elevator doors closed and I was alone.

With a single vector, I took a card key from the corpse of the doctor. I swiped it immediately and tried to remember quick facts - how many floors, how many corridors, what went where, from the casual conversation of those who had tended to my wounds and forced me to eat that foul gruel.

I quickly ascertained that the second floor might be my best bet. Even if I had to jump out a window, I was certain my vectors would soften the fall. Beyond that, I was lost - but the air called to me and that was all that mattered.

Soaked in blood, I ran out of the elevator and then came to a stop as ten feet in front of me, soldiers rallied up before me. I stared at them dispassionately, watching them all take aim, each man trembling as he gazed at my undressed body, unclean thoughts dancing in their glittering eyes while their automatic rifles were poised to kill.

"Pigs."

Half a dozen bodies fell apart like stacks of cards. Steaming intestines spilled out of a gaping torso, unseeing eyes stared from a skull rolling and bumping along against the corner of the wall and floor. An arm twitched on the floor, fingers pulling at empty air on an imaginary trigger. I hurried past, seeking my freedom with the key card clutched in my grasp.

This corridor was just a few steps away from the main corridor where doctors and nurses and guests would come to visit and check on the experiments performed. There were even friendly paintings of the ocean and sunsets and inspirational posters tacked onto walls in an office through the windows. One of them was midnight blue and black picture, with a single lonely lightouse standing on a hilltop overlooking a stormy sea. The word "Freedom" in all capitals embolden the bottom. Simple. Infuriating.

I encountered a second obstacle - a doorway with a number combination that I did not have. I spun around, fear, anguish, and hate filling me to the core. I wanted to make them all die, make each and every one of them endure suffering as long as possible. But if I did that, I would be at it all day and I would never find a way out of this nightmare.

Powerful I was, but psychic I was not. I stared around myself, trembling, watching as the lights dimmed and emergency back-up lights illuminated the hallway from lights in the floor. I pressed my back against the cool doorway, heart pounding. I was so close... was there not a single window I could break?

I looked up, desperate - then I detected an air duct. With deft, surgeon-like precision, I cut the duct open wide and jumped for the ceiling, vectors pushing me up while my scrawny, unexercised arms quivered to pull me in.

I crawled, using my nose - listening to voices screaming and an automated voice speaking:

"Genetic Anomaly Detected in Circulation Vent in Hallway 2A."

A red thread appeared inches in front of my nose. My eyes widened and I could only proceed slowly, reaching my hand out - if I touched it, would it burn?

It didn't - but it definitely alerted everyone that I was definitely crawling in here. I scuttled more quickly, scraped bare knees streaking blood wherever I crawled.

Then I encountered a puff of fresh air through the vent so strong I could taste the salt in the air. I laughed giddily, trying to muffle it against my hand. I shoved against a grate, nearly forgetting to use my vectors to assist. I fell through, landing on the floor in the middle of a dark, empty, quiet hallway.

"THERE SHE IS!"

The men rushed me from all sides - too quickly my vectors flailed and made a mockery of their armored bodies, casting them aside like the detritus of a dozen dying scarabs in a desert massacre.

Then it was over, and I was exhausted, and for some reason, my vectors hung around me like exhausted eels in an ocean. My short, cropped hair was heavy with blood. Tears streaked down my face because, I realized, that even more were outside waiting for me and I underestimated my body's ability to undergo such turmoil.

_Weakling._

I started, a cold trickle dripping down my back.

_Weakling child. Don't you realize your own potential? You were MADE for this. Don't be afraid. Let go. Let the carnage bathe you of your pain and suffering. Remember that humans are not meant to live. You are the instrument of their demise, a divine creation so perfect and pure. A machine of destruction, an absolute angel of death._

The door before me was open. I approached it, staring at the sky that had been denied me for so long. The horizon was an unfamiliar infinity of blackness meeting a glow that grew stronger and stronger and very, very far away.

_Destroy anything between you and that light. Destroy it all._

_Destroy._

-----

I was exhausted as I crashed against the shore. I was starving and cold, and the clothes I stole were of no use to me soaking wet. It was unbelievable how much I could miss something as disgusting as that healthy gruel.

The shoreline stretched left and right. I walked along it as far as I could. This was it - freedom. More suffering.

Then I noticed a familiar skyline. I had but to climb up the shore and through the rocks.

It was a church. It looked perfectly safe to me. I could take what I wanted without their false pretenses of righteous aid, or I could attempt a disguise once again. The military helmet had to go, though. I pulled my long hair back out of my face and tucked it into the helmet. Then with each agonizing step, I gripped the stones and climbed up to the church's grassy hill.

When I reached the top, I collapsed on the grass and rolled away from the ledge, wheezing. Then I rose shakily to my feet after several long minutes of laying very still and simply trying to recover. Food, I thought. I'm so hungry...

The view from that point was magnificent. I could see for miles and miles. I must have drifted for ages, fending off sharks with my vectors, propelling myself through rolling waves with my vectors. I knew it was possible I would die before I ever reached land, but I didn't care. I was out of there. No filthy human would ever touch me again unless I allowed it - and I never would.

I couldn't even see the facility where they kept me. It must have been so far away. Amazed at my own stamina, I turned and walked toward the stone church.

It was silent and absolutely empty. But the electric lights were lit and heat poured through the vents from some ancient system in the basement. I tore off my clothes and tossed them to dry on the pews before I wandered through into the little hallways, empty Sunday school classrooms with their walls pinning pictures of Jesus and God and all those imaginary friends that gave them comfort.

I trekked into a closet where I found choir boy robes collecting dust. I slipped them on, sneezed, and finally had no choice but to try and figure out where I was going to find something to eat.

In a small kitchenet, I discovered the fridge was still plugged in and connected to an electrical outlet that still functioned. I must not have noticed the power lines hooked up to the church outside. I fumbled around for something in the freezer that had not gone bad and microwaved a hot pocket.

The food was not entirely tasty to anyone else, but it was the most amazing thing to me. I always strained to keep my senses alert, for the slightest sound... but still, I was not prepared for the sudden hand clutching the back of my choir robe and yanking me from the floor where I had decided to eat like a dog, knowing no other table manners.

And the figure threw me clear through a wall. My vectors barely stood up to the sudden throw, hardly reacting with their usual speed. I landed on my back, cringing up like a spider in agony. The perpetrator appeared in the hole in the wall, dextrously avoiding falling rubble and smiling with teeth that seemed to glow with their own light. The teeth were too sharp, too inhuman.

I quivered, eyes slowly adjusting to the form occupying the crack in the wall.

My Diclonius horns stood out prominently from the curtain of pink hair that fell around me. The stranger gazed at them without speaking. He was the priest... except from his demeanor and the way he looked at me, he was not going to cast me out of his church for my unnatural appearance and powers.

"My, my. What a strange mouse that had crept into my trap. Good little girl. You'll provide me with enough fun to keep me occupied until others come."

He was out of my reach. But he stepped closer, his garb spattered with old blood, his gray hair slicked back from a wrinkleless brow. It disgusted me how young he looked except for those ugly eyes and his hair.

I heard a faint sound coming from outside of the church - then in the darkening evening, lights swirled past all the stained glass windows, shining on the church from above. Helicopters circled all around.

"What... are you?" I whispered, scooting back, raising my vectors around me, quivering under that gaze. All I knew was, he had to be human - he had the form, but inside he was something darker. A monster.

With jarring speed he rushed in at me, snarling as the whirring of helicopter blades became obvious. "YOU! You brought them here! You disgusting little bitch!!" While he threw me again, my vectors lashed out - and the arm that was extended in the act of throwing was severed right at the elbow. The monster looked bewildered at the sudden lack of a forearm. Then he screamed in agony as blood spurted from the fresh stump. I rolled across the floor, smacked into a pew, which exploded as my vectors splintered it into a dozen pieces and sent every one within reach whistling toward the monster as he rushed me. Heedless of the missing limb and the long pieces of wood thrust through his body.

He halted his advance, but stopped six meters away, only one of his eyes glittering when the other had a spear of wood puncturing through his skull.

_He's not dead yet. Why isn't he dead yet?_

_What kind of monster is this?!_

She skittered backward, her robe torn and hanging from one bare shoulder, vectors quivering around her. "I'll ask you one more time. What ARE you!?"

Behind me, the huge doors exploded. The doors whirled past her, narrowly avoiding me due to my vectors bouncing them away. I spun around, watching another monster enter - impossibly tall, the silhouette crimson and with nothing for a face except the glowing twin orbs of circular shades.

He lifted his arms, armed with long pistols, raising his head and the shadow his fedora created across his handsome angular face. I had but only a few moments to commit such a face to my memory before I dashed out of the way while behind me, the entire church filled with the booming reports of those immense firearms.

I crept through the wreckage. People I never noticed before emerged from rooms I hadn't bothered to look at before... only these were not people at all, they were empty, their faces had the same delightful rictus of death I saw in my own handiwork - but never had I been able to bring them to life again and make them walk and move.

They ambled toward me with a hungry glaze in their eyes.

I was too afraid to even move away. Here I was, a newcomer in a new world, and suddenly I was among monsters greater than I - and my fear was based mostly on my isolation of te past few years of my life. From being used as the humans' guinea pig to walking into a nightmare even greater than the one I left behind was tearing apart my very mind, and even the voice that had guided me away from my prison had nothing to offer.

I merely huddled in the corridor, lashing out at random with my vectors, only to watch the limbs twist and wriggle toward me as if mindlessly hungering though they no longer were attached to their bodies by any means.

I screeched, covering my eyes, covering my head, curled into my little corner, lost in this mad world where bodies no longer stayed dead and people came back to life and beautiful people shot at each other and never stopped moving no matter how many times you dismembered them.

I don't remember how long I was there. Time passed. Then did I dare chance to look up.

He stood right there, a short distance away, in a moonlit wooden corridor littered with blood and bodies hung from the walls and all around him in macabre configurations of suffering and torment. He looked around as naturally as if he was born in a room full of death, as if it was natural as walking through a field of grain. The red Victorian trenchcoat hung on his form like the dried underside of a skinned man, hiding his long arms beneath it and the hand lifting with poetic slowness. The muzzle was birthed out of the shadows under that nightmare coat, glittering in the swirling emergency light that alternated red-yellow-red-yellow from outside, making every glittery surface of it appear as though it were imbued with flame.

But so far, he did not see me. If he did, he barely turned his head to fixate those glowing orange glasses on my location.

Every instinct in me screamed to flee. For the first time, I was afraid. This entire place was Hell. He and I were its population.

"Are you just another dog?"

He was addressing me. I didn't know what to say. My vectors rippled around me, ribbons of death, rendered absolutely ineffective by his sheer presence. I stood up slowly, infuriated by the way my fear disabled me.

"Who are you?" I whispered. "What are you? And what is this place!?"

"My dear, this is England. You smell like blood and the sea, so you must have come very far to meet your death."

I felt my spine grow rigid. I sent my vectors at him, all four at once, crisscrossing toward his extended weapon - I would cut it to pieces before he could fire at me, knowing full well I could probably deflect the bullets anyway. But I wanted to defang this upstart, I wanted to show him that I was the greater monster.

How dare he make me afraid. I feared nothing - not even the chains that had once held me!

My vectors touched nothing.

He crept back into view from the left - from behind the altar, his eyes showing now. Red torchlights beamed from where his eyes ought to have been. He smiled as if I was completely inept.

"Fascinating. I never saw them coming but I felt them. Interesting appendages you have." He tipped his head back and opened his empty hands at me. "But you are human. Of that, there's no doubt. Just an advanced form of dog shit."

"I'm NOT human!" I screamed, insulted by his casual air. I calmed my nerves, every inch of me bristling with emotions I could not control, but my voice at least stayed soft again. "I am a Diclonius. I must destroy all of mankind. I was created for this... Humanity is a disease. A stain on this world. They're impure, vile, disgusting creatures, and all of them must suffer... for what they did to me!"

The man in the red coat walked toward me. He said nothing more, showing no sign of whether he heard me or not. His eyes stayed fixed on me, no more smiling but a dead, almost soulless look in those burning orbs. Finally he stood in front of me, and I had not raised my vectors in the least.

I quivered in front of him. He reached up and with white gloved fingers he touched my horns. I flinched, staring at him through my pink hair.

"Another monster... ha ha ha... with the face of an angel. But what are these scars?" He smirked, tracing the bare skin of my shoulder, over the various jigsaw puzzle of scars of experimentation.

A single vector stretched around him. She could slice him in half... and then in half again, and it would be a little flick left to destroy his head and make sure he was completely obliterated.

He smiled again. "Do you want to be free forever?"

I nodded, barely daring to breathe.

"Do you hate mankind so?"

I nodded again. I could only think - what monsters were they.

"My Master would not allow you to exist. In fact, she has informed me just now that you must be destroyed. Are you afraid?"

I shook my head quickly. Tears were streaming from my eyes.

"Where are you are from?"

"From the facility... an island. They capture monsters like me and experiment on us to find our weakness... and find a way to stop us from breeding." The words were falling from my lips easily, as much as I was loathe to tell him the truth, but still, it seemed to be best to go with it also.

"Who are you?"

"Eve." My lips quivered.

He nodded, sliding his hands into his jacket.

I crushed him with my vectors, tearing him apart with my embrace - I had no intention of dying at all. Not today. Not when I had just landed back on my homeland and sought freedom. His body went in several directions at once. His fedora flew into the air with part of his gray matter still in it and his limbs spread across the entire room.

Sprayed in gore, I closed my eyes and rejoiced in the violence, because I wanted to be victorious - to be stronger and faster and with less fear. I was born to be a killer, and so I killed.

No matter who it was.

I walked through the church hall and to the open doors. There were helicopters flying overhead everywhere... and none of them noticed me approaching the doors nor walk outside until a search light focused on me.

I turned my vectors inward - I turned off the pain. It was as easy as finding the lightswitch in a dark room that I knew too well to fumble around. But I felt something push me from behind. I kept walking. I never knew what it was until I felt a weakness in my legs and dizziness. Confused, I looked behind me and saw a trail of fresh blood. Then I followed the trail to the church doorway and saw the red coated man standing there with the smoking gun in his white-gloved hand.

I couldn't believe my eyes. My vision veered to the left, and my last reward was a sideways view of the sea glowing in the setting sun. As my consciousness slipped out, I saw Venus emerge from the night sky as a bright speck, glowing in a black velvet curtain.


	2. Chapter 2

She was asleep in the darkness, a thick padded bandage wrapped around her torso. She was nearly conscious now. There had been no medication required for her to stay asleep, because her body was fatally wounded and rest was all that she needed. Her long gold-pink unwashed hair had been bound up in a rough pony tail. The walls that kept her a prisoner were made of several inches of solid stainless steel. The only view into the room was through a nearly microscopic heat detecting camera. The only entrance: a section of the wall slid away but only after a complicated series of locks was activated.

From her temporal lobes protruded two very unique horns. The right horn had a very pronounced chip missing from the outside edge. The beautiful creature was both at once familiar and a little alien, considering the natural color of her hair and those horns and her body, dressed now in hospital gowns, that was covered mostly in scar tissue.

The head of the Protestant Knight sub-organization, Hellsing, stood in front of the screen, tapping her fingernails on the finely polished mahogany desk. "You said its name is... Eve?"

"Of course, my Master." Hellsing's best dog, Alucard, stood by her side, watching the sleeping creature in the cell. "The female was at the scene... and from what forensics could gather from the wreckage, she had spent some time in the kitchen and ate food when the little parasite scum found her as a late night snack, not expecting more."

"He threw her through the door, chipping her horn. Then he brought her to the pews and perhaps intended something very inappropriate with her. There was blood on the walls. She has no weapons of any kind, except..." Her intelligent, furtive eyes glittered behind glasses that caught the light of her stained glass desk lamp. "Except what you told me about these... invisible hands you spoke about?"

The Nosferatu had a way of looking thoughtful that made him appear almost human. The handsome face was framed with medium-length black hair which he wore back behind his ears today. His dark eyes had a colorless quality that almost seemed to suck the light out of everything else the more emotionally charged a situation became -until they began to glow that feral, lurid red glow that marked him as something Other. Though sometimes he looked like a shark, gliding through the halls of the Hellsing Organization's base of operations - and Integra Hellsing's home.

He had the traditional pointed ears of a Nosferatu. Many new vampires rarely had this quality. He usually hid his ears with his thick gorgeous hair. He could also alter his appearance as he wished. Sometimes his hair was long and black. Sometimes he wore his traditional oxblood Victorian trenchcoat with a pressed, rich gentleman's suit. Sometimes he appeared to his enemies like some kind of black, winged demon with obsidian hair a messy riot. Very rarely, he appeared as a dapper young female with a clever little face and straight dark hair and straight cut bangs just above her sharp, assessing little eyes.

His lips straightened into a thin line now, his masculine features chiseled into a look of dark fascination.

"A new kind of monster, perhaps?"

"They're a mutant form of homo sapien called Diclonius," explained a voice from the doorway at the other side of the sumptuous room: Integra's office. The man who entered wore a plain slate gray suit, freshly pressed, and his oily black hair was slicked back with obsessive neatness from a hawklike face and sharp, Asiatic eyes. His skin was dark, but his clipped grammatical qualities tagged him as Japanese. "They're extremely dangerous to other human beings and must all be destroyed."

"You must be Takasawa Inoue." Integra Hellsing lifted her eyebrows at his rather neat appearance. He carried a briefcase. A young woman with spunky blonde hair near the doorway slid up behind him and relieved him of it without even being asked. Seras Victoria had been Alucard's Draculina for several months now, and she had still resisted the allure of drinking from her first kill and therefore awakening the darkest power known to man.

Now she greeted Mr. Inoue like a human, with a stern look and a certain adorable shyness.

"For security measures, Mister, ah, Inoue, sir."

"Where did--" Takasawa Inoue blinked at her, then sighed, opening his hands in defeat. "All right, I see I'm outnumbered here. Forgive me. I meant no harm and did not intend to compromise anyone's safety."

"It's fine. Just be careful what you bring in here."

"The suitcase only contains paper documents about the subject you have captured. Biological rhythms, physical characteristics, known factors of her powers - and the particulars of her escape."

"Escape?"

"She was among one of three subjects at our laboratory where we study Diclonius." Takasawa gave an apologetic smile and inclined his head. "My apologies, for the rest is classified on a need-to-know basis. We only politely ask that she is returned to us."

Integra stared at the creature on screen through her laptop. She had barely stirred since her body began to awaken from its restful slumber. "What... exactly is she? Seeing as how she is within our jurisdiction at this point, our organization demands answers."

Inoue and Integra matched looks. The Japanese held her gaze for an admirable amount of time. But her cold, bladed resolve overpowered him. She had won the game of dominance yet again.

"Very well."

Seras had opened the briefcase. Now, with the manilla folder in hand, she approached the desk and handed it over. She didn't mind this small job of servitude. The Draculina had fewer joys in life than to do mundane things once in awhile, Alucard thought.

Inoue's voice carried a tone of nervous doubt. "Over the phone, did you say your agent... Alucard... encountered Eve and survived? There is evidence that says she used her vectors against the terrorists." Takasawa Inoue clearly had no idea that Alucard was, in fact, a monster as well. Not to mention the 'terrorists' were the aftermath of a vampiric infestation at that seaside hilltop church. The man clearly acknowledged only his own breed of monster but apparently not others. Perhaps there were no such things as vampires in Japan. Very unlikely.

Alucard was quicker to answer than his beloved master, who opened the file and pulled out a five-by-three-and-a-half inch color photograph of Eve, her eyes emptily staring with a soulless quality.

Alucard said, "I thank my quick reflexes and sharp mind for my ability to survive and find a way to subdue her."

The girl's file was riddled with black, blocked out text. What they currently were allowed to know were things they could already gather from their own quick study while she was unconscious.

"What are these vectors?"

"They are high-frequency weapons that have the ability to pulverize anything they can come into contact with. They can fine-tune control them to pick up objects - like telekinesis. They can sever objects with disturbing ease. They are invisible to the human eye, except for one case in Japan." He took a deep breath, apparently trying to blur the details of the case from his memory. "These vectors help them to move around at great speed and great length. They can affect the world around them. The vast majority of Diclonius have an instinctive urge to kill humans wherever they can find them, as I have said, Hellsing-sama. We are trying to find a way to stop them from reproducing."

"And how...?"

"With their vectors, we have discovered that certain contact does not kill a human being but... infects them. The victims do not know it. Indeed, they may not even know that they have been touched until they reproduce years later - and find that their own child is a Diclonius. By then, it may be too late. A Diclonius child's vectors and instincts mature at a young age - and their first victims are always the parents that raise and love them, often in spite of their disfigurements. Even more infuriating, not all Diclonius have this innate ability. We've called the rare ones that can the Queen. We even assume there can only be one at any given time, which are made like others, but it is hypothesized that only a queen can produce another queen."

Alucard looked undisturbed, but the mental cogs were turning with the prime, well-oiled clarity of a very ancient being. He stared at the color photograph of the Diclonius female. Eve was very pretty and quite young. Photographs of her exposed body revealed ugly deep tissue scars that never healed - more livid ones were etched in purple, still-tender sores.

It reminded him rather of a certain Judas priest.

She was not even deserving of censor bars or clothing. He could not even imagine the condition of her imprisonment. His lips curled as he took in the bony underfed condition of her body in the photographs.

What kind of monster was she that deserved such attention or research? Why did they not just kill her? Obviously, these Diclonius were a nuisance and should all be murdered.

"How exactly do you cull this infestation?" Integra asked as Alucard quickly lost interest and walked away from the desk. As if reading Alucard's thoughts, she continued as she stood up and leaned forward, pushing the paperwork away from her as if it offended her. "If they are such a menace, why do you not kill them instead of waste time and efforts studying them? Especially if it is so easy for them to escape." A mocking smile had crossed her features. "All it takes is one stupid _human_ mistake, then you've got blood on your hands. Are you prepared to accept responsibility for the men who died to stop her? Or go to extreme lengths to prevent such a thing from happening again?"

"I...I don't know, ma'am. I'm from the Japanese division, I-I'm not exactly aware of the facilities on the island here in Europe." Her passionate response made the Japanese man extremely nervous. He looked as if he wanted to apologize, but the fire that filled Integra Hellsing's eyes told him something else about her - that she was speaking from a deeper, darker experience than his simple job could ever give him. He was helpless before the silent cold wave of energy that she threw at him. Her hands were clenched till the fabric of her white gloves stretched taut across her knuckles.

"You are dismissed, Tawasaka Inoue. Take your monster back with you and wherever you go, make sure she doesn't slither away from you again."

Suddenly there was a sudden change in pressure in the air. There was a dull, distant booming. On the monitor, the female was standing up and taking the measure of her surroundings, shivering in the clothes they had found her in. The blood on her stolen robes must have darkened to brown.

"Wh-What was that?!" cried Inoue.

"What else but the devil you sought to imprison?" With that grim analogy, Alucard turned to grin menacingly at the tiny Japanese man. "Shall we see who gets to be the one to sedate her again for her trip home?"

All he could think about were the scars on her body and the fear and anger in those same crimson eyes glittering with tears that night in the church. She had seemed both very innocent and extremely jaded. She had to be human, because she had not quite realized how human he wasn't. Then she would not have even tried to kill him - although the exotic feeling of being sliced to pieces by something he couldn't quite see was rather nice.

How could she, after witnessing his power? A cornered lioness would defend itself with every ounce of savage strength she possessed. He had not known what to call this ethereal girl. She had smelled of blood and looked like a frightened predator in a new territory with bigger predators around. Her eyes were a ruby red the likes of which only his kind knew, as if possessed by a constant unending bloodlust.

"Tell me. Did they discover Eve or was she born in their facility?"

"We found her." Inoue had no idea that the female Diclonius was on her laptop screen which Integra studied with her usual clinical frigidity; he was standing on the other side of the desk. Integra looked at the female as she sat in the corner of her metal chamber. Eve's eyes lifted slowly, looking even more alien and strange via the heat signature camera. She looked directly at the camera for just a split second, but it was enough to make Integra wonder if this monster knew of its existence, even hidden as it was.

"We found her," Inoue muttered again softly. "She was all alone and it is... assumed that her parents are dead. She was eight years old. Found her in London, actually."

"London?!" Integra hissed as she slammed her fist onto the desk. "We had one in London and we had no idea!"

Alucard suddenly left the room, eating up the floor to the door in record time. Record time for a human, at least. Seras Victoria was listening to everything as she stood at attention by the door as he passed her. She piped up, "Wh-Where? London? How on earth did they find her!?"

"People noticed a little girl that didn't seem to disappear to go home. They said she had pale hair, white hair. Others said purple hair and everyone reported that she wore a hat that covered these strange horns." Inoue cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable, adjusting his tie. "There had been strange murders. Decapitations. Mostly older men in the neighborhood found in alley ways, stuffed into dumpsters. I don't really know all the details, but it... it was all very gruesome business."

---

Alucard had left the room. He was following the unspoken protocol to check on their captured prize as soon as she was awake. He was certain that all that meant was he was going to see Eve's vectors in action herself.

Hopefully this Japanese interloper would leave soon. It was absolutely imperative that none would put two and two together and uncover Alucard's true nature. Part of the reason why he left the room was to give as few opportunities as possible for Mr. Inoue to notice something not-quite-right about the red-coated male. If he scared the man, he might not even be allowed to return to Japan in order to protect the secret from spreading to other countries unless the Queen thought it was to the nation's advantage. Even if he was chained to the Hellsing lineage, who would see the leash before they laid eyes on the vicious, snarling dog?

Alucard stopped in front of an apparently blank panel of wood covering the wall. Then he strolled forward without flinching and vanished directly through it, as his body dissolved in shadows. For directly beyond this point was the hidden room where Eve was contained. He had no need to use the door mechanism - it might compromise her secured status. Though the room looked air-tight, there had to be little entryways to recycle air as the prisoner breathed. Faster than the eye could notice, he dissolved into mist and passed in through the microscopic pockets of air in the wood and found his way into the air ducts that recycled the air in the cell... and made himself whole again in the metal container where Eve was crouching, trying to make sense of her new small world.

"Eve. Or is that your real name at all?"

Glorified angelic beauty was an easy way to describe her. If it weren't for all that dried blood.

"You." Her cherry colored eyes glittered. "The last thing I remember... was the sea." She quivered from head to toe the longer Alucard looked at her. Then, there, he could see her vectors. They were long arms, transparent and rising like serpents, with hands opening and closing, opening, closing.

"Do you remember me?" he asked her in that chilling voice. "Do you remember what I can do?" There was winter in his smile.

The room grew absolutely frigid and pitch black. She could no longer see him at all. But her vectors found him for her.

The room felt like it had imploded. The air pressure changed enough to make her ears pop; she had no idea if this creature felt the same. Vectors could torn apart this entire room, but it would have taken time, and in that wasted time they would come and shoot her once more. So, helpless and trapped, she sent her vectors for this man - monster - whatever - and ripped at his clothing, his flesh, cutting him crosswise and lengthwise, until she was sure he would simply fall apart from all those perfect cuts.

Then he leaned forward ever so slightly. She crushed her back to the wall, waiting for him to crumble apart this time. Her eyes widened. So did his own. That wintry smile widened, widened, revealing rows of impossibly sharp canines.

_H-He's like a dog_, she thought. _Some kind of crazy dog man that wants to eat me alive. Is that why they brought me here?_

He took a step closer. Then another. He reached out and grabbed her by her chin and dragged her effortlessly from the wall. She would have fallen but he had her in a vice-like grip.

"Let go of me!!" she howled, furious at her own helplessness. "Let go, I said! _You will not send me back there_!!!" Real tears were falling from her face. Crying like a helpless little girl. It seemed impossible that such a monster could be capable of tears. He had been cut apart by her vectors, but she cried like a real human being - and real fear and apprehension was gripping her by the throat and choking her words.

The limbs grew limp, hanging and drifting on currents of air.

"My Master will give me an order that I must obey. You understand?" He straightened her and pushed her toward the wall. His hand had her by the bicep and pushed her. The wall groaned and opened on enormous metal hinges. Then they walked through a long, brightly lit hallway. She used her free arm to shield her eyes, whimpering.

"You're stronger than me..." She wriggled, straining to look up at him, realizing it was a mistake to try and see his face. It was heavily shadowed by the lights. All she could see was the horrible redness of his eyes. "You're so much stronger than me! You can escape this Master. Why won't you escape?!"

He didn't answer her. She balked at his reticence. She continued to struggle, then clenched a vector into a fist. She slammed it through the middle of his chest with a satisfying crunch of bone and tissue. Her vector emerged from the other side, dislodging bone and tissue out the other side, a cookie cut-out of her vector's hand.

Alucard lurched. His eyes narrowed, then he turned right around, his other hand closing over the top of her head. He threw her against the wall like a rag doll. She blacked out immediately.

When she came to, she was still falling to the floor, blood pouring from her nose. She called on her vectors to assess the damage to her cartelidge and cried out when he grabbed her by the little ear-shaped horn. She felt her entire skull creaking and moaning as if it was coming from directly inside her ears. Eve and Alucard walked down the hallway together now, but it was more accurate to say that she was being dragged almost by her ear by the calm and serene nosferatu.

When she saw the small Japanese man, she was confused for a moment. Then the hard-faced woman, and several dozen guards with RPG's and heavy caliber rifles aimed right at her vital organs. She wondered if they would still shoot if Alucard was within the lethal range. If he would die.

"You're going quietly," Alucard said to her.

"Alucard," said the harsh-faced woman, smoke uncurling from her nose like she was the Devil. "Administer the anesthesia and see to it she is secured for transport."

"Yes, Master." He looked at the congregation of trembling soldiers. Some of them looked as if they would faint dead away. Obviously, these were not his Master's dogs. "Don't worry. She's as gentle as a kitten right now."

Then he took Eve by the back of her shirt, forced her head down, and pinched a pressure point. She fell limp at once. Someone quickly ran forward with medical equipment. A drip was immediately administered to her to keep her under to the point of nearly comatose. Alucard alone was allowed to tie her firmly her to a gurney. When that was done, qualified Diclonius personnel secured a metal object around her skull, closing her off completely from the world.

Alucard joined Seras, Walter, and Integra by the door as the Diclonius female was wheeled to a huge truck that bordered on armored tank status. Men rushed to and fro, organized to the letter, but all of them stank of fear.

"What is she?" Seras whispered. "I've never heard of a Diclo-whatev before." She grimaced as they pushed Eve into the thick armored vehicle and locked her within. Soldiers were everywhere moving with solemn quiet, only the occasional command issued with a shout.

Alucard had no answer for her yet. Not a good one, anyway. Monsters like Eve were a whole different classification. Something that was beyond Hellsing's radar. However, if he read the look on Integra's face properly, she was about to do a bit of expanding where it concerned strange young children murdering their families and disappearing into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

It was all noise suddenly. The mask blinded her from all things. In a way, it would protect her forever from the things that would hurt her. That was what the man had promised her anyway. And that was how she had lived since her had taken her away. She could still remember that day, when she could still see the horrors of the world and feel the pain visited upon her daily by those horrible men in labcoats. Then the other men had come, only this time they promised they would never abuse her or make her feel pain. She hadn't believed them one bit. They disappeared when she used her magic on them - a feeling that exhilirated her and terrified her but made every inch of her feel alive like nothing else before.

Then the other man had come. She would have killed him too, except he had something she never had before. He walked right up to her without losing that beautiful smile. His hair was blonde and slicked back perfectly, spiked straight and evenly. His wore a uniform almost like the white ones the one who hurt her wore, except his was somehow different, with more folds, little metal pieces and decorations and jingling bits that jangled when he approached her. He was tall, lanky, graceful, and easily the handsomest human she had ever seen.

Except she was sure that he was not human. His eyes were green but sometimes she would see them flash red for no reason at all. He had smiled that endless smile and offered her his hand and said he forgave her. She had killed his men, but he said they had been rude to her by pointing their weapons and shouting. His polite frankness shocked the girl. She quivered on the floor, in a puddle of blood. Baffled, she took his hand and he helped her to her untrustworthy legs. When she collapsed again, he removed his black labcoat and put it around her to cover her nakedness, which she thought was a silly thing to do. She was even more baffled by this strange gesture. The others never let her wear clothes before. Then he picked her up and carried her away into a noisy box that moved them to another place very fast.

He told her she would be safe now. He would never hurt her, and he would make sure no one else did. Then he explained the metal mask she was inside. How it would protect her, keep her warm, safe. Most importantly, someday it would help her be stronger, too.

Her tiny frail body encapsulated into that living mask had been her shelter from the world, and now it was noisy. It had not been this noisy since before the Man had stopped reading to her. The mask covered her entire body from head to toe. She could see nothing but she could hear his voice. The Man used to read to her every book he could get his hands on; she could ask him questions, but she usually stayed quiet and simply listened to him. She heard the Ilyead, Homer, Karl Marx, even religious texts like the Bible. Sometimes, to break up the long books, she heard Cat in the Hat, Berenstein Bears, and other children's literature even though she could not see the pictures. But he tried to describe them to her. Colors, the characters, backgrounds. She put them all together inside her mind and it was beautiful, this world he made for her. In her dark little world, she was God and made her own trees, her own people made of clay and sticks and rib bones. Then sometimes he would read to her in another language. She couldn't understand him, but it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

Then he stopped reading her to altogether with only a brief explanation: "I am sorry, _mien frau_. I must go away from you for awhile, but I am always thinking of you." His words felt like honey poured through her ears. She had wept in her mask for him, feeling that he had abandoned her forever, that had all been just a stupid fantasy that she could be like that forever. Listening to his beautiful, lyrical voice and strange outlandish tongue coating her ears with words, words, words.

Then, after days of nothingness, suddenly it was noisy. She heard shouting. And she was moving again, so suddenly and violently her stomach was turning upside down and inside out. She whimpered, asking over and over what was happening to her. Where was her Reader? Where had he gone? Would he come back?

No one answered. Everyone was shouting in a language she could not understand anyway. But the noise grew quieter and farther away... and suddenly there was a silence and a distant, heavy humming that she could feel in the backs of her molars. She breathed quick, shallow breaths, panicked thoughts cramming for space in her mind. Her vectors waved all around her little shell home, searching, searching. When she felt nothing, they drew toward her.

"Little one. Are you harmed?"

"Reader," she gasped. "You've returned!"

"I'm sorry for being away so long. Are you harmed?" She could feel him closing the distance between them. He was usually so far away, but he was as close to her now as that day when he had saved her.

"No," she answered.

In a moment, she heard his fingertips rasping along the metal encasing her skull. His voice growled close to her in that strange gruff accent that was more like a lion purring. "It is dark. May I open this, so I can see for myself that you are safe?"

The frail child trembled. He said it was dark, so it would not hurt her eyes. The mask hissed when it disconnected from the air circulation unit. Then he lifted the visor and lowered the mouthpiece a little. If it had been years since he had closed her off from the world, she had no idea. He looked the same as the first day he came to her and delivered her from Hell. His strong Germanic features, high cheekbones, pallid skin, beautiful smile with those odd little sharp teeth.

"There you are," he whispered passionately. He reached to touch her face very slowly. She saw his hand approaching her cheek, his long delicate fingers tipped with sharp nails. But she did not flinch away. Instead the girl held her breath, all her power straining to retain the urge to touch him in return. If she touched with her vectors, she would only destroy. Her own arms were held rigid, but her fingers flexed and relaxed helplessly in the leathery grip of gloves she could not see.

She expelled her breath with a harshly little moan. It was the first time anyone had touched her face. Gooseflesh roughened her skin from her head to her toes. His eyes captivated her attention in such a way that she barely noticed the people flooding the darkness around them. Her dozen vectors floated haplessly around her, affecting nothing.

"You are sure you're all right? Do you need anything?" His warmth touched her; it seared her very soul.

"Don't leave me again," she replied firmly. Her vectors solidified, realized themselves more fully. The maleness of him comforted her but at the same time, he felt suddenly like something that belonged to her. She had a right to him. Her eyes narrowed and she felt a switch in herself twitch to another position. "Or... Or I'll kill everyone else in this room." Her small, breathy voice echoed disconcertingly. It was strange to hear things as they were; all this time she heard everything through the speakers in her mask. Voices in her ears were once again crisp, clear, and most of all, it was his voice she heard. She could even hear her own ragged breathing permeating the small, suddenly deadly still room that was beyond her safe shell.

"That won't be necessary. I am going to be with you for a long time, little one. You are so important to me; I was in agony every moment I was away. In fact, I am here to tell you about why. There are people. People who would do me and mine harm."

The frail child looked at him with shock and horror, then a freakish energy bloomed around her. Her vectors became restless. Everything about her became brittle and hard all at once. The air quivered with expectation. The collective breaths of people everywhere in this dark room, with its distant humming as if a great engine was turning, was held as if in awe.

"What should I do?"

"I shall tell you about your special mask now. It is not just a mask to shield you from the world. It will help you to be strong, as I said. Do you remember?"

Since the mask prevented her from nodding, she said, "Yes."

He stroked her cheek again. Her eyes rolled back and she shivered pathetically. Cold tears streamed down her cheeks, caught on his ice cold fingers. "And I will tell you at last my name. And give you your own."

The tiny creature made a soft little noise, a swoon unlike anything before. She wanted to be held in his arms, to be warm and safe. She did not want this shell. She wanted to be named, and have that name whispered to her in the same fashion that he touched her. She cried openly, her vectors looping around the pair as if to cage them together forever.


End file.
